Minsk is not ready to share oil with Moscow

Belarus , which receives duty-free oil from Russia in exchange for petrol supplies, wants to halve the volume of oil products returned - to 1 million tons. The country has not fulfilled its obligations since February, but if before the Russian Ministry of Energy threatened retaliation in the form of reduced oil supplies, now the Government doesn’t see this as a problem. Experts also don’t consider the demarche of Belarus a serious threat to the Russian market of petrol, but they forecast a deficit in 2016 if Moscow doesn’t postpone the ban on the circulation of fuel below the Euro 5 standard.

Belarus has asked Russia to increase the duty-free oil supplies to 24 million tons in 2016, said Russian Minister of Energy, Alexander Novak. This is by 1 million tons above the level of the deliveries in 2015 and corresponds to the schedule of the deliveries, approved in the intergovernmental agreement in 2014. According to the Kommersant’s interlocutor familiar with the situation, Belarus wants to receive 23 million tons of oil through the pipeline, and the rest - by rail. At the same time Minsk wants to reduce the return of petroleum products to  Russia by two times, to the lowest possible level under the agreements: 1 million tons. Prior to that, in 2016, the deliveries in the amount of 2.1 million tons were planned. Mr. Novak said that the Russian side "analyzes this proposal", but the Energy Ministry didn’t see the "big problems in reducing the amount of returned oil products as originally the volume of 2.1 million tons was slightly overstated".